BLINDSIDED BY FALLING FOR HIM

Chapter Four

SLOAN

I was in Coach's office at seven on the dot, my stomach in knots. I hadn't slept off, running through every possible reason he could want me there alone.

He didn't make me wait long.

"Relax, Whitaker." He didn't even look up from the folder on his desk. "This isn't a bad conversation."

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

"I wanted to ask you something before I put anything in writing." He finally looked up. "You and Cole — you've actually started training together? Outside of the mandatory stuff?"

"Yes, sir. Backyard reps, mostly. Route recognition, protection calls."

Something like approval moved across his face, brief and real. "Good. Keep doing that. I don't care whose idea it was — it's working. Your reads have gotten sharper in just a day than I've seen from a lot of guys in a full season." He closed the folder. "That's all. Keep up the good work. Go eat something before practice."

I walked out of that office lighter than I'd walked in, and if some small, unhelpful part of me was already thinking about how to tell Jax that Coach had actually noticed the backyard sessions, I told myself it was only because he'd earned the credit, and nothing more than that.

The weeks that followed blurred into a rhythm I hadn't expected to find this fast — practice, film, backyard drills until the porch light clicked on automatically, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, Harlow.

She started showing up to practice on her own, no invitation needed, camped out on the bleachers with snacks she'd clearly bought specifically for us protein bars for Jax, the sour candy I'd mentioned liking exactly once, like she'd filed it away without me noticing. She'd drive us home some evenings when Jax's car was in the shop, loop us both into plans for dinner like it was the most natural thing in the world that the three of us were suddenly a unit.

I hadn't meant to like her as much as I did. It would've been so much easier not to.

"You're in Kessler's intro to marketing class, right?" she asked one afternoon, cross-legged on the porch steps while Jax ran extra reps alone in the yard, working out some frustration I hadn't asked about. "I swear I've seen you in there."

"Business major." I passed her the bag of candy she'd bought for me, an offering. "Two more semesters and I'm officially a senior and not a freshman, which feels like it should be terrifying and currently just feels far away."

"Shut up, same just year left and I will be in my finals." Harlow grinned, delighted, tucking her knees up though she might look excited there was still a sad expression on her face. "I did not clock you as a business girl. I would've guessed something dramatic. Theater, maybe."

"I contain multitudes."

"Clearly." She glanced toward the yard, toward Jax, something fond crossing her face that I chose very deliberately not to examine too closely. "He's got another year after this, you know. Architecture takes forever — five-year program, all these design studios that eat his entire life every spring. I keep telling him he picked the one major on campus designed to make sure he never sleeps."

"I didn't know that." It surprised me, a little, how much I didn't know about him yet, how much I'd been learning in pieces without meaning to collect them.

"Yeah, well." Harlow shrugged, easy. "He doesn't really talk about himself much. You have to dig." She said it lightly, but there was something underneath it I couldn't quite name not jealousy, exactly, just a kind of familiarity that reminded me, every time I started to forget it, exactly how long these two had known each other, and how little I actually understood about what they were to each other at all.

I didn't ask. It wasn't my business to ask.

I went back to watching Jax run routes in the fading light instead, and told myself, the way I'd started telling myself a lot of things lately, that it didn't matter to me either way.

The final full-pad practice before the opener felt different from every one that came before it sharper, faster, everyone aware that the next time we ran these plays, it would count.

Coach blew the whistle as the stadium lights buzzed on overhead. "Good work. Bring it in — Whitaker, Marks, Cole, my office. Everyone else, go home."

The film room felt smaller with just the four of us in it, the projector still warm, playbook diagrams frozen mid-slide on the screen behind Coach's desk.

"Sit," Coach said, and we sat.

"Opener's in seven days. I've made a decision on how we're rotating quarterbacks, and I want you both to hear it from me before it goes to the rest of the team tomorrow." He didn't waste time on preamble. Coach Reyes never did. "Whitaker starts the first quarter. Marks closes it out from the fourth on. We'll evaluate week to week from there, based on what I see."

The room went very quiet.

I felt my own heartbeat everywhere at once — throat, wrists, the backs of my knees — the particular, disorienting quiet of getting something you'd wanted so badly you'd stopped letting yourself picture it clearly.

Marks didn't move for a full three seconds. Then he laughed, short and humorless, and stood up so fast his chair scraped hard against the floor.

"You're serious."

"I don't joke about depth charts."

"I've started every game for this program since I was a sophomore, Coach. I brought this team to conference. Twice." His voice was climbing, and beside me, I felt Jax go very still, the way he did right before he decided whether something was worth stepping into. "And she's been here — what, three weeks? And she opens the season?"

"She's earned the reps she's gotten." Coach's voice didn't rise to match his. It never did that was exactly why it worked. "This isn't a referendum on your career, Marks. It's one quarter."

"It's never just one quarter with you people." Marks was already moving toward the door, grabbing his bag off the floor hard enough that a folder skidded off the table. "Fine. Whatever. Let the freshman have her moment."

He didn't look at me once on his way out. The door didn't quite slam, but it came close enough that the blinds on the film room window rattled in the frame.

Coach exhaled, long and slow, rubbing a hand over his jaw. "He'll be fine by morning."

I wasn't so sure. Neither, judging by his face, was Jax.

"Congratulations, Whitaker," Coach said, softer now, almost gentle in a way I hadn't heard from him before. "You earned it. Go home. Get some sleep. Next week, you're a starter."

I don't remember walking out to the parking lot. I remember Jax's hand landing briefly on my shoulder, warm and steady, and the way he said, "First quarter, Whitaker," like it was a promise instead of a fact but the rest of it blurred under the sheer, ringing disbelief of finally, finally hearing someone say I belonged here out loud.

I didn't think about Marks again until much later that night.

I had no idea, standing in that parking lot with my whole chest full of light, that somewhere across town, he was already driving straight into the worst night of his life.

MARKS

The steering wheel felt too small under my hands, like the whole car had shrunk to match how furious I was.

First quarter. Three weeks. Three weeks and a pretty face and whatever it was Coach saw in her that he'd apparently stopped seeing in me after years of doing everything right every rep, every extra film session, every Saturday I'd handed this program on a plate while everyone acted like that was just what I owed them.

I thought about the way Coach had said her name. Whitaker. Careful. Almost protective. I'd seen coaches get like that before, over players they were building something around — but this felt different, and the longer I sat with it at the red light two blocks from the facility, the uglier the thought got, and the less I tried to talk myself out of thinking it.

Maybe it wasn't about football at all. Maybe Coach just liked having a girl on his roster he could parade around for every local reporter who wanted a "first female quarterback" headline, every recruiting brochure, every booster dinner. Maybe it didn't matter what she could actually do under pressure in front of forty thousand people, because none of that was really the point.

She didn't earn a damn thing, I thought, foot heavy on the gas the second the light turned green, she just walked in and took it.

I didn't notice the intersection ahead until I was already through the first one, blowing past the edge of campus onto the two-lane road that cut toward my apartment, still running the whole conversation back in my head on a loop she's earned the reps she's gotten — my jaw so tight it ached.

I didn't notice the car either. Not at first.

It came out of the side street fast too fast, headlights swinging wide across the intersection at an angle that made no sense for a driver braking normally and it was only in the half-second before impact, watching it fail to slow at all, watching the driver's face go white with the specific, useless panic of someone stamping a pedal that wasn't answering, that I understood, with total and terrible clarity, that the brakes on that car were already gone.

I had just enough time to yank the wheel.

It wasn't enough time at all.